​ It is exciting to me to find so many of you who are interested in exploring what is being shared with us about the afterlife. More than ever before, our media resources, such as TV, movies, magazine and newspaper articles, are publishing stories on this topic. This is encouraging to me because it is an indication that humanity is ready to move out of a 3-dimensional consciousness into a multidimensional consciousness - to imagine life beyond the physical realm. This is certainly not a new concept for many of you, but it seems that the mass consciousness is waking up and becoming more aware.

I was inspired to write a book on this topic after having some very exciting and comforting experiences in contact with close family members and friends who have made the great transition or passed on to another dimension. My whole perception of what we call death changed with the realization that there is no death. The death experience has been revealed to me as another phase in the evolution of each soul - a part of the bigger picture or the bigger Life.

Let's explore the ways in which we might become aware of those dimensions beyond the visible one where we live in physical bodies. Can we have conscious contact with our loved ones who have completed this phase of their experience and who have moved to a level invisible to us? Can we visit with them in our dreams? Are they still involved in some way in our lives here? Can they help us when we need their help? Can we help them?

Path of Initiation 2

by Ann Frazier West on 07/19/12

This post is in response to Deborah's comment on "pain and suffering" in the previous post:

Deborah . . . Thank you for your thoughtful comments below. The topic of pain and suffering is related to our study of the initiations. Epigenisis is a term used in Science in our modern world, but it is also used in Theosophy. In the latter, epigenisis can denote "genius, originality, and free-will." In this use of the word we can say that epigenisis produces a spiral evolution of all the kingdoms ever moving up into higher vibrations instead of what would otherwise become a circular groove ending in static extinction." (Alder, 1972) So epigenisis is the instrument and the builder of evolution and progress and is brought into being by one agent - pain.

The feeling and desire nature are necessarily connected to the astral plane - it is sometimes called the plane of illusion and can in its imbalance in our being lead us into delusion. Creativity, originality, feelings and emotions - both positive and negative - are influenced by astral consciousness. The animal kingdom is building an emotional-desire body, developing an emotional nature, and they respond and react with feeling and instinct rather than with reason. A goal of the human kingdom is to learn to control the desire body - the emotional level and live more consciously in the mental level. The vibrations are higher on the mental level. As we evolve the astral or emotional level can still be used for pleasure, but the evolved human being will learn to control emotional pain from a higher level - mentally and spiritually.

The result of pain, according to Vera Stanley Alder in The Initiation of the World, is awareness, reaction, adaptability, modification, originality, genius, and epigenisis. We as humans have been given free will which explains why we are responsible for our own pain. As we evolve we will no longer need pain to help us learn right from wrong. We are learning about balance on all levels of our being and helping others to achieve balance, too.

Human selfishness, consciousness still at a relatively lower stage of development, greatly affects the animal kingdom. There are unthinkable cruelties still being inflicted upon millions of animals every year. The animals suffer at our expense. Each kingdom experiences sacrifice to the kingdom above it. It is an evolutionary process, and the sooner we develop and evolve spiritually in the human kingdom the sooner we can stop the suffering of the kingdoms below us.